A new challenge. There are several organists at this particular church which play on a rotation basis. What is apparently happening is that each organist programs the combination action according to the music they plan to play obviously over writing any existing c/a's. That has become an issue because that means there is a need to re-program the c/a each time because for instance, organist A worked hard at creating the "perfect" registration and organist B reprogrammed the c/a and overwrote it.

Hauptwerk does have a feature - being able to load and save multiple combination sets (files) and recall them. Sounds like an answer to the above, however the procedure is somewhat involved and most likely not possible at least not easily on a headless instrument. So my first question is this a feasible option to pursue?

Following that line, thinking each organist could have their own "bank" of combination action "files" which would be good. Using Roman's (Midi Hardware) features of Program selector #2144 and Bank selector #2145 with any of his boards that have an analog input. (Bank selector uses a 10 position rotary encoder (switch) with a 1K resistor between each switch position, Program selector uses a 12 position rotary encoder (switch) also with a 1K resistor between each switch position.) What that means effectively is that there could be 10 organists each with 12 (personal) combination action "files". Obviously huge overkill that would need to be scaled down quite a bit to become practical.

As I understand it, Hauptwerk can be made to understand these Bank and Selector files (presets). A little more involved than setting up a c/a piston and saving it with the Setter.

Then there is the need to indicate first the organist and then which preset Program file. I believe H/W would do this last part via a LCD display, yes? As far as selecting and displaying which organist, using a rotary encoder (switch again) , thinking about using a Arduino 1602 LCD Blue screen display (along with a Serial Interface Module. I'm a newbie here but so far I have been able to write code so the display reads "hello world". per lesson #1. Pursuing that will be my next challenge. Very likely I'm going off the deep end , but all this seems doable. Not at all sure the organists, at least some of them could/would accept this. Dunno so haven't said anything about this to them. The saving grace is that they all are avid Smart Phone users.

Thinking ahead, it would be nice to have the top line of the display read out as the organist's name and the second line which Program file.

Hauptwerk’s combination system has 32 favourites each of which may be loaded by a single midi command. I use a launchpad to select which favourite to use (auto detect the launchpad button for the appropriate load favourite combination). I display the loaded combination on a “standard” lcd display. I allocate one button on the launchpad to save the current combination (without dialogue) and another to clone / copy a combination. This would work with a headless setup.

You could share the 32 favourites amongst the organists.

You could choose other ways of loading the desired favourite combination (such as a bank of pistons).

You could use the HW cue mechanism and a couple of pistons to go back and forward through the favourite combination list displaying the cued combination on the lcd, and use another piston to load the cued combination set, and another to (re-)save the current combination set. You could set one to clone a combination set too. Going through a list of choices with the cue mechanism can provide a piston economic way of choosing a number of HW options (organ to load, temperament, combination sets...).

You could program a more tailored solution....

It is important to remember that some settings which you may not want to vary with the combination sets, such as master reversible combinations, are stored in the combination files. I seed/initialise the combination files I use for each sample set by first setting any of the things which are stored in the combination file in favourite 1 and copying this file (by cloning) to all of the other favourite combinations.

Remember that the midi settings to operate the combination system must be set for each sample set.

Maybe I've misunderstood, but I thought this was just the sort of situation that the 'Alt Config' arrangement was intended to deal with. With a headless installation, I suppose the particular configuration which launched could be tricky to set up though.

In this instance I guess if the 'several' organists is more than four it wouldn't be a complete solution even if it could be made to work.

A little background, there are 7 organists involved. Somewhat unique, but that alone makes for interesting challenges. What happened was several smaller congregations were combined to form one larger one.

Of the group, only 3 are "trained" organists. The others are basically self taught pianists that "play" the organ. On the whole, they all are good musically speaking but some are not technical as far more advanced organ (control) features of an organ, hence the problem(s) I need to work around.

So initially as I was musing, if one rotary switch could select a bank and be programmed to display an organist's name while another would select and display a combination set. Think that would lessen the problem.

IainStinson wrote:Hauptwerk’s combination system has 32 favourites each of which may be loaded by a single midi command. I use a launchpad to select which favourite to use (auto detect the launchpad button for the appropriate load favourite combination). I display the loaded combination on a “standard” lcd display. I allocate one button on the launchpad to save the current combination (without dialogue) and another to clone / copy a combination. This would work with a headless setup.

The Launchpad Mini is only 7" square and .5" thick. The round buttons on the 2 edges are labeled A-H and 1-8, which is perfect for assigning HW combination favorites as Lian explains. You can build a custom under keydesk drawer, like an Allen organ controller drawer, so you can pull it out only when you need it. As noted in earlier threads, you'll need to get the 1st or 2nd generation Launchpad as the newest version has unsuccessful button color control with Hauptwerk. The 2nd gen are gray colored units (sometimes shown with an orange USB cable) and are great as they are 100% compatible and the lights are brighter.

Appreciate the ideas. We have plenty of assignable pistons available that could be used. However adding another piece of hardware, I'm afraid, would only add to the confusion and errors. I use LaunchPads for my home instrument and that works for me. A different story with these people coming from piano mentality where there are no buttons, just keyboard keys to press.